High Iron Page 4

  “Caranniam and Varenlend,” I said, “may have had a hand in covering their movements. They could manage that, I think. The wizards, Sennet, are working with Red Gorge. We learned this while we were out.”

  “The men of Caranniam? And Varenlend too? Were they part of this? I saw only dunters.”

  “Perhaps they are holding back,” I said, “but they are allied with them.”

  “Allied?”

  “Yes. We have learned this.”

  “Treachery from Varenlend,” he said. “They had been holding themselves out to be our neighbors.”

  “We need to find the councilors, Sennet.”

  “Let me help you get across the river,” he said. “Here, wait a moment.”

  “You needn’t—”

  But he stepped inside the mill and then came out with an empty flour sack. He walked to the edge of his building nearest the bridge, and waved the sack around the corner a few times. He then peered out.

  “Friends!” he shouted.

  “Sennet, be careful.”

  “Follow me,” he said. He walked out, still waving the sack. We followed on our horses. The bridge across the river was only a dozen yards long, and the city wall was not far beyond that on the far bank. We could see sentries clearly.

  “We see you, miller,” one of them called down.

  He lowered the sack.

  “I leave you here, then,” he said to us.

  The gate into the wall was offset from the road across the bridge. We rode closer to it, and the sentry called down again.

  “Aiman, Britta. It’s good news you’ve returned. Jed. Many were concerned about you.”

  “Who is this?” Jed called up. He squinted.

  “Bollard. You know me from the ferry, Jed.” He was a large young man, standing with his musket resting on a merlon. “Do you think they have pulled back? I don’t hear much from them.”

  “Perhaps. We only saw one,” I said.

  “I’m not sure why they retreated, if they did. I’m afraid we didn’t do them much damage. As far as I could see.”

  “Perhaps they didn’t want to take on those walls,” I said.

  “I suppose not. They brought no cannons.”

  “So these walls were worthwhile,” I said.

  “Indeed. They paid for themselves today. I knew you would be glad about that, Aiman.”

  The council of Emmervale had debated restoring the walls for a long time, and it had been only within the past five years that the project had been completed. In the thirty years our people spent in Stenhall, many sections had deteriorated. Gates and sentry towers had been burned. Those who had spoken against their repair had said we were one hundred years too late; cannon could pulverize them. My father had supported the effort to build them, however, and now it was clear to me that he had been right. He had always said it was unlikely any invaders would haul heavy artillery along, if they chose to attack us, since there was so much empty land around us to cross.

  “Can you have that gate opened?” I asked.

  “Yes, but I think we are coming out ourselves.” The wooden gate jolted and creaked, then. It swung open, and a handful of men on foot emerged.

  The leader was Jens, a white-haired older council member who was well known to many of us. He was a mathematics teacher in a primary school. He barged forward, cradling an enormous wide-barreled musket.

  “Gentlemen, and Britta,” he said. His voice rasped, and his eyes were as tired as Sennet’s had been. He barely looked like the calm teacher I remembered. “You’re a welcome sight. We are going to sweep the city. The word has been passed to other gates also. It’s good you’re still on your horses. Join us.”

  “You made it behind the wall,” I said. I knew that his house was on the west edge of town. “Did Ava?” This was his wife.

  “She did. She still has some speed when need be, it turns out.”

  “How did you manage it?”

  “The dunters made a racket, and they stopped at every home, every yard, to sack. They made off with hogs, milk cows, whatever they could lead or carry. And of course they burned, which took them time,” he said grimly. “At many houses they would load up their kobold servants with our animals, and whatever else, while they themselves stayed to light fires. Let’s move.”

  We crossed the bridge again and passed the mill. Sennet again came out. He and Jens spoke as more men and women issued from the gate.

  “We need to get on with this,” Britta said. “They may not have left. We’ll have to flush them out if not.”

  “Let’s tell him,” I said.

  We rode up and spoke to our old teacher. He took leave of Sennet and motioned for lines of people to move up different streets.

  We moved north, first, along the river, while others spread into lanes that eventually led out of town to the west. As we guided our horses near the riverbank we passed three untouched houses but then the blackened ruins of another. A few more burnt houses, and then we came to a dry goods warehouse that had a dock on the river. It was smoking, and damaged, but still intact; a rolling pump had been moved up next to it, along the street side of the building, and was spraying water into the bottom floor through open windows. It was a hand pumper, and three men on each side worked its bars furiously.

  We continued down the street, and now came upon another group which had been heading south from another gate.

  “Aiman!” someone shouted; I recognized my sister Lily’s voice. She ran through the crowd.

  Her face was smeared, and she looked shocked, still, but she was unharmed. She pulled her hair back out of her eyes.

  “You’re safe,” she said. I should have been worrying about her, not the other way around, since she was the one whose house had likely burned. But she spoke with relief and set her hand on my knee.

  “We didn’t know if you would be caught behind their lines,” she said.

  “We were not touched,” I said. “What of Bron? And the children?”

  “All well. Bron is up ahead, and the children at Father’s, for now.”

  “The dunters didn’t reach the farm, then? No one came down from the north?”

  “No,” she said. “My house is gone, but we have lost nothing else. The farm is whole. Not a sheep harmed.”

  This seemed to be good news, to her.

  I pulled her up behind me. We rode to her home, picking our way along through the flattened streets. Formerly we would have passed by the fine house and shop of Sol White, a carpenter; and a row of narrow homes belonging to three of his sons; and also a large chicken house of a neighbor of Lily’s. All were now destroyed. And then we saw that she had been right in her guess; her own house was burned to the ground. It had been lovely: a sprawling cottage of thick planks of ironwood, varnished red against the weather, surrounded by flower boxes and vegetable plots.

  “Did you manage to take anything out?”

  “Coats, each of us. We didn’t even have time to find sacks. Bron took our strongbox. For once I am glad it is small.” She smiled bitterly at this.

  “Did you see them?”

  “I did not. I ran out first, with Gaya. I held her hand. Then the boys, then Bron. Bron said he saw the dunters further down our lane. He said they seemed very methodical, torching the homes one by one. They let the people run, from what I have heard.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “People are thinking that they came to take supplies, more than kill. They carried off a great deal, everyone says.”

  “A great deal,” I repeated. “They wouldn’t need that much meat on the hoof if they were just raiding. It sounds like they intend to stay.”

  I rode across a good part of this side of Emmervale before heading back across the river to our farm. The large majority of the houses were burned. Numbers of people were making their way back, now, to see what had survived, and most were disappointed. Men, women, and older children picked through the remains of their homes—whatever remains were cool enough to touch—but could
find little. From them I heard similar stories: they had managed to run, in time, but had mostly lost their homes. Any livestock they had maintained in their yards were gone. People in town did not have the number of animals that the farmers outside of it did, of course, but everything they did have had been taken. Horses, hogs; milk cows here and there. Later I learned that the farms outside town had been sacked in this way also.

  And there had been deaths. Just as Lily had said, the dunters had apparently come with the intention of stealing, not massacring the town, but some of us did not survive the night. Burning homes collapsed on a dozen or more, mostly elders who did not hear the disturbance or were not able to flee in time. Several men who had confronted the dunters in the streets had been struck down, also. For our part, we had killed at least thirty of them, mostly in the shooting from atop the walls. Their corpses were dragged through the streets to a grave that was dug outside town. I assisted with this. The dunters were like those we had seen out near the tracks, with large noses and unbelievable teeth. The ones with their lids still up showed red eyes.

  Later that day, in the afternoon, riders of ours brought word that the dunters had not removed themselves too far from our lands. They had set up a camp no more than a few hours’ ride from our westernmost farms.

  One of these men who had viewed the camp was Bollard. He spoke with us as we all strained to clear a street of the remains of a fallen warehouse, toward sunset. He had ridden up to us straight from his foray, dismounted, and set to work rolling a burnt beam off to the side. It was a long day of hard labor for all the town.

  “How many would you say there are?” I asked.

  “Perhaps two thousand. I did not linger to count. And there are some large tents in among them. The dunters seem to be just a crowd, a swarm, with no protection from the weather at all, that we could see. But there are fine white tents there also. Those are set at one edge of the camp.”

  “Those would be the personnel from the cities,” Jed said.

  “I assume so,” I answered.

  “The cities?” Bollard asked. “Caranniam and Varenlend?”

  “Yes. While we were away, we learned that they are in on this plan of the dunters.”

  “So it’s true. They are working together?” He paused, holding a blackened timber. “It must be the mages who have written the plan, I should think. That explains how the dunters came up with anything this ambitious.”

  “I wonder,” Jed said, “if that trader, Ralenda, knew that this force was out here. If she knew it all along while she was speaking with us, but withheld it for some reason.”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “She was so open with us. I think she would have mentioned this had she known. She would have told us to hurry back. It also seemed she didn’t realize the wizards had joined in, yet. But that must be who is in those white tents.”

  “Perhaps including those who came to see you, years ago,” Jed said.

  “Perhaps.”

  Bollard shook his head. “We’re up against something quite serious, then.”

  “More serious than this?” I asked, gesturing at the burnt ruins all around us. “But yes, we could well be.”

  The following day was one of more cleanup, and of burials. We posted armed sentries on the west side of town, but no dunters appeared. The previous night I had returned to our house to stay with my father. Lily, Bron, and their children had also moved in. Our farm was untouched, including our sheep. There at my childhood home and in the quiet pastures it seemed unreal that such a disaster had befallen, just a long walk away.

  Our house was on the north side of town, as I have said; on the outskirts, just where the fields and pastures began their gentle rise up to eventually reach the foothills of the mountains. We were the edge, by our estimation and everyone else’s. “Past the Shearers” was a local term that meant anything north of the town of Emmervale. There were a few more families who lived further up the rise, but they were considered frontiersmen. We enjoyed living close to people, but not shoulder to shoulder with them.

  “Anyone who lives farther out than we do is a misanthropic hermit,” my father liked to joke, “and anyone who lives farther in is an insecure worrywart.”

  Of course we needed to be on the edge of town to have grazing for the sheep. One might wonder if our fondness for open space developed because we depended on it in this way, or if our family chose sheep herding because we enjoyed the solitude.

  That night I took a horse and rode out to see the dunter camp. I did not expect to learn anything that Bollard had not, or that any others among our scouts had not already observed, but I wanted to see for myself. Despite my contact with the mass of dunters out by the rail line, and their frantic kobolds, and the elves, their presence here still seemed unbelievable. I saw them burn Emmervale but I could still barely grasp that they were so close.

  It was less than two hours’ ride to the camp. I had expected to see scores of bonfires, and huddles of dunter faces lit by flames, but there was little of that. The dunters, I remembered now, could get along with very few comforts, and would have thought nothing of enduring endless cold nights. Then again, it was good enough weather now to sleep outside. Next to the white tents of the men in the camp, though, I did see a few fires. I wondered who might be around them. It might well have been some of the visitors who had come to us from Varenlend, seven years earlier. Sokran might be too old for the adventure, by now, but Annira and Annelle could be there.

  I rode closer. Rahune and Rahira were both visible in the sky, this night, and both half full, so I could see well even without the fires. The dunter army spread out before me, a black mass against the gray nighttime fields. It was ominously large. At a few hundred yards away I could see pens they had built for our livestock they had stolen. Individual dunters were visible, sitting idly or going about errands. Spilling out around the edges of the main dunter mob were knots of kobolds who seemed tirelessly busy even at night.

  I turned my horse. Our new neighbors looked to have set themselves down for a long stay.

  The day after that, the Council of Emmervale convened. By ancient tradition—and when I say “ancient,” I mean since we returned to the town, thirty years earlier—the Council met in the brewery. This was not meant to devalue the Council; the brewer had simply had the largest room available, back when the body was established. The original man’s daughter, a councilor named Thona Hopper, continued the tradition today. She was the Meeting Master, for the assembly, but not its leader. The Council had no leader, in the custom of Emmervale. The forty councilors sat on benches amid the many barrels in the warm brick room. The meeting smelled of fermented grain. There was loud chatter.

  But then Thona stood and announced:

  “We commence.”

  Instantly the room quieted.

  Councilors spoke in turn. Several from the west side of town, and from the western farms, spoke of their losses. Father—who was a councilor too, as was I, owing to our heritage—spoke about the dunter army. He gestured toward me.

  “Aiman has seen them, as have some others of you. And you all have heard by now what Aiman was told: that this dunter army has come to attack Stenhall, first. But we know that this alliance of wizards and dunters will not tolerate a free Emmervale if they do defeat the dwarves. We must decide if we should attempt to remove them.”

  And with that, there was silence. The councilors mostly shifted on their benches and shook their heads. My father understood how hard it would be for us to attack the dunter army; I think he just wanted to be sure all of us were thinking the same way.

  “But Anders, could we possibly push them out?” someone asked.

  “We don’t have the numbers, if they are two thousand,” another answered.

  “I would say they are many more than two thousand,” I said.

  “Very well,” my father said. “It seems we agree. I am afraid we do not have the power to remove them.” Emmervale was not large. We were growing, but we would be lucky t
o muster a thousand men at arms. Decades after the plagues, and the consequent explosion of dragons, we were still living the effects of those disasters. Our numbers had not yet recovered. There was a time long ago when we people of the eastern mountains would have smashed any dunters who dared come near, but now we were unable to respond. And now the dunters had guns and steam engines.

  “If we won’t attack, we have to defend,” another councilor said. “I know many of us are passing nights awake as sentries, but we are not organized. I do not think anyone here could even tell us how many guard posts we have. I don’t think anyone could really say if there is a system to raise a general defense, if need be, either. We have to organize.”

  This was all true. The Emmervale council worked together to run what needed to be run, in the town, but there was no military command. Such tasks as restoring the wall, as I have mentioned, had been a group decision. The council had hired the masons and overseen the work, but after it was complete nobody in particular had remained with any power over the wall.

  “We have no captain in charge of our fortifications,” this councilor continued. “No one in charge of defense in general, either. It’s just as well we cannot attack their camp; we have no one who could organize the push.”

  Sennet, the miller, stood.

  “We have many who could,” he said. “We need one man, or one woman, to direct everyone, or at least direct our muskets. Until this danger is over.”

  I had attended these meetings for a few years, but had rarely said anything. This idea, though, I had to respond to. I stood and spoke.

  “We have this council, not a hero. This is Emmervale. Our grandparents did not work so hard to return here, to a free town, just to see one ruler take over. They could have stayed with the dwarves if they had wanted that.”